Versatile, High-Quality Motions and Behavior Control of a Humanoid Soccer Robot

Autonomous soccer games represent an extraordinary challenge for autonomous humanoid robots which must act fast and stable while carrying all needed onboard computers, sensors and batteries. In this paper, the development and system integration of hardware and software modules of the 55 cm tall, autonomous humanoid soccer robot Bruno is described to cope with this challenge. Altough based on a ”minimalistic” design which only uses gyroscopes in the hip but not foot-ground contact sensors for control of balance, versatile and high-quality walking motions have been developed. Fast forward walking of about 1.5 km/h has been obtained using an efficient sequential surrogate optimization method and walking through uneven terrain with a newly designed passively compliant foot sole. Further modules of the software and control architecture which are needed for an adaptive selection of different motions and autonomous robot behavior are briefly described. Experimental results are reported which have been obtained under the conditions of a live competition. The robot’s hardware is mainly based on standard components which can therefore be easily adapted by new designers as no comparable, standard humanoid robot platforms are available.